“The colorist is the person who makes your rubbish film turn into something watchable,” moderator Krishan Arora began on a panel on color at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2018.

Alongside him were Katherine Jamieson, a colorist at the London-based Halo Post (with her recent work including The Real T-Rex with Chris Packham and Pilgrimage: The Road to Santiago), Samuel Francois-Steininger of Paris-based Composite Films (a trans-media studio specializing in color, animation, and short films), and Ruhi Hamid (Africa: A Journey into Music), a director across broadcast television, with recent work for BBC, Channel 4,and Al Jazeera.

Hamid reflected on doing her own camerawork on her recent piece in South Africa: “It’s a visual medium we’re working with, so you have to make a feast for the eyes… Even though I’m doing all the filming myself, the production values have gone up so much, the demands are so high for broadcast television.” Hamid filmed on a C300 as well as on Go Pros, an Osmo, and drones.